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Handsome Aaron Burr signed note 1 month before 1st Presidential campaign
Handsome Aaron Burr signed note 1 month before 1st Presidential campaign
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Description:

Burr Aaron 1756 - 1836 Handsome Aaron Burr signed note one month before first Presidential campaign, with bonus portrait engraving

Signed note, 6" x 2.5" inlaid to a page, dated "8th Aug, 1796", and signed by Aaron Burr as "Aaron Burr". Faint pencil and light handling marks. Accompanied by lovely near fine printed engraving of Burr, 5" x 7", affixed to a sheet, along with documented provenance as noted below.

A great example of a signed note by Aaron Burr. A neat scripted a note authorizing bearer the payment of "#Seven Hundred Dollars#" from "Bank of Discount & Deposit of the U.S. -"

A phenomenal period in US politics as this bank promissory note was written just months before the Burr's involvement with the first presidential election -- an all out ugly affair of slander, and mud slinging between the candidates Adams and Jefferson. This created the needed opening so Aaron Burr could jump in and attempt a run for the Presidency as well, and ultimately climaxed for Burr when he killed Hamilton in a duel! Heading into this mess, Washington had been so popular that he won his two elections without meaningful opposition. But Washington said in September 1796 he wouldn't seek a third term, giving Americans about three months' notice to find a replacement.

At the time, Vice President John Adams was pitted against another Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, in a race to succeed George Washington as president. A letter in the Gazette written by a man name Phocion said, in terms understood by most readers, that presidential candidate Jefferson was having an affair with one of his female slaves. Phocion's letter was what we would today call an "attack ad."

Phocion was the "pen name" for Alexander Hamilton.

Phocion also accused Jefferson of running away from British troops during the Revolution, unlike his brave friend Alexander Hamilton and also paid compliment after compliment to Adams and claimed Jefferson would emancipate all slaves if he were elected president.

The "slave" letter was one of several dozens written by Hamilton during the campaign, all attacking Jefferson.

Meanwhile, Jefferson's folks had been using their own "strong" campaign tactics in the fight against Adams. Adams was being accused of wanting to be king and starting a dynasty, and sucking up to England, too, in the process. He was also accused of being overweight.

In the Saturday Evening Post in 1976, the legendary columnist Jack Anderson wrote about response from Adams' "people."

"Adams's opponent, Thomas Jefferson ... was accused of being the son of a half-breed Indian and a mulatto father. Voters were warned that Jefferson's election would result in a civil war and a national orgy of rape, incest, and adultery," Anderson said.

The Adams folks also said Jefferson was godless and wanted to spread the French Revolution to America. They also said Jefferson's supporters were "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amid filth and vermin." But in 1796, it was unsuitable for a candidate to actually campaign directly, and only one candidate did so, the lesser known Republican vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr. Surrogates were the first embryonic factions that soon evolved into political parties.

In a moment of reflection as one then reads George Washington's statement of the events, the reader takes pause, steps back and sees that what Washington anticipated in his farewell address has come to pass and has since stymied most future elections going forward. At that time, Washington, in his disgust noted about the political parties in his farewell address given just three months before the election that "They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community," he said. "They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

Washington wouldn't live to see his prediction come true. The very next 1800 presidential election, an Adams-Jefferson rematch led to an unforeseen constitutional crisis_ÑÓa tied election_ÑÓfueled by deeply partisan tactics and more plotting by Hamilton, Jefferson, and Burr.

The result was the passage of the 12th Amendment, which changed the original presidential voting system passed in 1787. It was ratified in June 1804, just a month before Burr killed Hamilton in their famous duel.

This massive political snowball starting just after the innocent signing of a promissory bank note by Aaron Burr .... An attractive set, which would present beautifully framed together

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